Scaling your Law Practice using Legal Tech
#LegalTech is one of the most popular hashtags on social media right now. Proof that legal innovation and technology are not going anywhere! Can we be the first to acknowledge that the legal profession has become… pretty static? Disruption is required in the sector, which sounds exciting to us! Consider a world in which law teams may devote more time to clients rather than time-consuming billing, filing, or forms. Today, more than ever, most legal teams are using legal technology. The possibilities of harnessing technology have risen enormously in today’s modern world, whether it’s interacting with your team online or using technologies like Zoom to have an online meeting.
Legal technology is evolving on a regular basis, but legal teams are lagging behind. These two discrepancies might make integrating technology into practices a tough task. Keeping lawyers up to date on the newest trends and tools can help them integrate legal technology into their practice.
Instead of making excuses for the time-consuming process of integrating legal technology, legal teams should welcome new tools as they address some of the most pressing demands in modern legal practice. If you are curious to learn about “Scaling your law practice using legal tech”, let’s get started.
Let’s talk about legal tech…what is it exactly?
The legal tech environment is divided into three major categories of solutions, according to a BCG analysis titled ‘How Legal Technology Will Change the Business of Law’ (Jan 2016). There are three types of solutions:
1) Enablers
2) Support-process solutions
3) Substantive legal solutions
Enabler technologies, such as cloud storage tools and cybersecurity services, aim to make procedures easier to digitize.
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Support-process solutions improve the efficiency of operations ranging from customer contact management to accountancy.
The automation of simple or repetitive legal processes, such as contract drafting and contract analysis, as well as document screening, falls under the third category of substantive law solutions. A legal tech software like Legodesk manages it all.
Why should you leverage legal tech?
With the increasing narrative of innovation, alteration, and disruption, it’s no wonder that professionals in many industries see technology as a threat that might jeopardize their careers and eventually put them in junior professional employment.
This does not have to be the case, however. Legal teams can and should embrace legal tech because it has the ability to increase efficiency and production, improve client service, and save money.
1. Increase productivity, efficiency, and quality
Expanding billable work product output without enhancing headcount or hours is the key to increasing legal team productivity. Given that clients expect more and better service at a reduced cost from their external lawyers, the way forward for legal departments at NBFCs, banks, FinTechs, and law firms is to increase efficiency and productivity. According to BCG, prominent law firm partners reveal that 30 to 50 % of duties in apparently customized cases may be automated using tech-based platforms like Legodesk.
While artificial intelligence (AI) is frequently viewed as a threat because it has the potential to eventually replace humans, it can also be an ally. Deep Learning is a fundamental idea in AI, in which a program or software “learns” how to make better predictions based on previous actions and/or data each time it anticipates human behavior. In fact, AI is already assisting legal teams in a variety of ways.
- Data Retrieval – Legal practitioners can use AI-based platforms like Legodesk to automatically organize, discover, and summarise information collected from legal documents at a much faster rate than human lawyers could.
- Document Management- To assist legal teams in completing cases more efficiently, AI can be used to generate and analyze documents for key information, discover errors, e-signatures, and run statistical checks.
- Case Management- Legal case management software like Legodesk allows legal teams to effortlessly organize cases, track updates, store, and manage documents in one spot.
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- ODR- Online dispute resolution tools such as Legodesk assist NBFCs, banks, FinTechs, and law firms in resolving their disputes faster. It replicates the current dispute settlement procedure in an online context, reducing time, cost, and distance constraints.
- Contact Management- With AI, NBFCs, banks, FinTechs, and law firms can keep track of all of their client’s information, including matters, contracts, papers, tasks, timesheets, and payment information.
- Finance Management- With legal tech software like Legodesk, legal teams can create invoices with a single click. Send them to clients automatically, set payment reminders, and more.
In addition to increasing the volume of output produced by your team, utilizing technology increases the quality of your job. Because of the tedium of sifting through big numbers of papers, smart software can help you minimize human errors. You and your legal team are continually improving as a result of increased efficiency, productivity, and quality of work.
2. Strengthen your service commitment to your clients
Project management and performance measurement are two crucial areas for a legal team to focus on to serve clients efficiently. Offering legal project management that incorporates legal technology is one approach to set your legal team apart from the competition. Demonstrate to your clients that you have a project team that can handle all aspects of the project. Aspects like an organizational chart, a work process framework, evidence of delivery on similar projects, and an estimated turnaround time. All while using tech tools to help with sections of the process. You’ll need to quantify your edge using key performance indicators (KPIs) after you’ve added value to your client through enhanced efficiency brought on by technology.
Using legal technology to help you offer more with less can help you increase your legal team’s value proposition.
3. Streamline your operating model to save money
It is a profession to be a lawyer. Law firms, on the other hand, are businesses that require a stable income model to remain viable. The days of in-house legal teams handling all legal tasks are long gone. Legal process outsourcing (LPO) for low-skilled legal tasks, as well as automation of high-volume standardized procedures, has allowed legal teams to save money. You can gain economies of scale by investing in legal tech. Once you have the technology, the marginal cost of using the existing tech solution for each new case is little.
Around 27% of businesses believe that technical developments are necessary for existence, and their assumptions are right.
In most industries, technology has taken the lead, and it has impacted how things are done across the board. The legal profession must follow suit and take advantage of new developments in order to keep up with the times.
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Legodesk organized a webinar on 21st April 2022 on the same topic. Our expert speaker Shreya Vajpei shared many helpful tips and insights regarding Legal technology adoption within legal teams. Click this link to access the Video